The risk of toxicity to the brain, the locus for mood and mental function, is something to ponder, especially since there are health approaches that balance brain chemistry in a gentler manner.
The researchers described implanting electrodes in the man's thalamus, which, by stimulating the brain tissue, had enabled him to regain considerable physical and mental function.
Studies have shown a link between exercise and mental function.
Besides being de facto murder of the original occupant, it would also require that the incoming brain be completely intact, and be able to rewire for all physical and mental functions.
Psychotropic medications work on the brain to affect mental function and behaviour.
Few of these cases have been closed so far, but in one, in 1996, a jury awarded $16.5 million to the family of Brenda Young, a woman in Michigan, now 42, who was resuscitated in 1992 despite her written instructions, and was left with severe brain damage and little mental function, needing constant care.
Barr thinks that: 1. in bodily function, humans are animals, 2. there is a close connection between physical events in the brain and mental phenomena, and 3. the brain may be essential for any mental function.
Brain neurons interact through synaptic connections to generate mental phenomena, and damage to a part of one's brain affects mental functions.
Dementia is an umbrella term describing a progressive impairment of the brain's higher mental functions.
For cognitive neuroscience to go forward a more explicit effort is needed to use neurophysiology to constrain how the brain produces human mental functions.
